Jamie123

Ah well - that's the first of his videos I ever saw, so I guess I came in half way. Having said that though, aren't Latter-day Saints also looking for effective ways to preach their beliefs to other Christians? It works both ways. P.S. I removed the link, as it could (at a stretch) be regarded as anti-Mormon. I thought it was rather a nice summary of Alma, but best to be of the safe side.

On second thoughts I'm removing this link. While he isn't "anti-Mormon" exactly, he doesn't hold back from identifying things he believes are wrong. As far as keeping to the rules of this forum, I'd rather err on the side of caution.

It's certainly the case in the UK. They're as bad as each other. Whenever there's an election I'm strongly tempted to vote Monster Raving Loony (an actual party!)

If you think about it, simply being intelligent or beautiful is nothing to brag about anyway, unless you put it to some good use. Just sitting on it is being like the "one talent servant" who hid his money in the ground. (You may think this servant was a bit of a waste of space anyway to only be trusted with one talent, until you realise that a "talent" was the equivalent of about a million dollars today. The master was staking a major investment in that man.)

It's very similar to the story of the wise and foolish builders (Luke 6 and Matthew 7). And who can hear that without remembering...?

Would it be correct to read "combination" as "conspiracy"? ("Secret combination" sounds like something you use to unlock your bicycle.)

Thanks Zil - I've been lagging for a few days but I've almost caught up again now. Yes, these chapters are a bit dry in places. I can imagine many people reading them in the same spirit that they slogged through the Wars of the Roses at school. If you want something even dryer though, try 1 Maccabees. (I don't know about 2 Maccabees - I never managed to finish 1 Maccabees!)

<winge>That makes you approximately four years younger than me. It sucks to get old. I wish I could be a stripling again.</winge>

Alma 56:30: "Antipus ordered that I should march forth with my little sons to a neighboring city, as if we were carrying provisions to a neighboring city." That's exactly what I thought it meant. I simply said the word (for me) conjured up a mental image. We don't use the word "stripling" much nowadays. If there were an "NIV" version of the Book of Mormon, I suppose it might have "juvenile" instead. But it was not supposed to be a deep insight. I cannot quote you chapter and verse right now, but they are definitely referred to at some point as "righteous men".* *Doubt now assails me. Perhaps I'm remembering something I read on this thread rather than in the actual BoM.

I have heard of the "stripling warriors" before. I know what a "stripling" is, but I can't dissociate it from being "stripped" naked. My mental image is of a bunch of naked guys with swords and shields running around chopping people's heads off. It's odd that Helaman should call them "little sons" - were some of them perhaps not fully grown? (They are described as "men", not "boys", though maybe in that language there was no separate word for "boy" and boys were just called "young men".) Also maybe they were "little" in age, not physical size.

Are you suggesting that coconuts migrate?

I have walked around Uffington Castle many times and don't remember ever seeing any signs of a wall. I haven't found any speculative pictures of what it looked like, but im sure i do remember seeing one on TV once. I think its generally believed there was once a wall, but it would have been a wooden stockade, not a stone wall. (The motte and bailey castles built by the Normans would originally have been wooden too, though later replaced with stone.) Offa's Dyke may have been a mound and ditch, but it was nearly 200 miles long, so no mean achievement. I don't know if it originally had a wall or not, but I did find this picture: Another example would be Hadrian's Wall, but I don't think that had an earthwork - it was just a wall. As was the Roman wall around London. That wall was still intact in 1066, and it allowed the Londoners to repel William the Conqueror. (That's right! Whatever you may have been told, London was never conquered by the Normans! William tried twice, but was repelled both times. He eventually had to negotiate a peace, whereby they would recognise him as king provided he didn’t interfere with their affairs. That is why to this day London is not only its own city - quite separate from Greater London - but its own county*.) Only a tiny fragment of that wall now exists, next to the Tower of London: (BTW only the lower part of that wall is Roman - where the stonework is darker. The upper part is much later.) *One reason why Matilda never became queen after capturing her rival was because she refused to recognise the special status of London. The Londoners slung her out of the city and reinstated Stephen as king.

When you're at the bottom of the social scale, I don't suppose it matters much whether there's a king at the top or a bunch of squabbling aristocrats. When the French gave Louis XVI the chop, the people "of high birth" pretty soon went the same way. Fun fact: Marie Antoinette's final words were "I am sorry monsieur, I did not do it on purpose". (She had just trodden on the executioner's foot.)

I'm not sure I agree. Uffington Castle in Oxfordshire, which despite its name is not a true "castle" at all but a defensive earth work, was created about 800 BC. Also the Romans created many earthwork defences of that type. Later still Offa's Dyke was dug about 800 AD as the western protection for the kingdom of Mercia. P.S. I just thought of another example: Old Sarum: This is what it looked like in the Middle Ages, but the surrounding earthwork is much, much older.

Didn't George Armstrong Custer make exactly the same mistake?

In the UK, we used to have the "binary divide", in which all larger higher education establishments were either universities or polytechnics. In theory, a degree from a university was exactly equivalent to the same degree from a polytechnic, but university degrees had a greater perceived status. This was partly because universities had independent degree-awarding powers, whereas all polytechnic degrees were awarded by a central body called the CNAA. This system was ended by John Major's government in the early 1990s, and all former polytechnics now have the status of universities. That explained, on with the joke... A university student and a polytechnic student go to the bathroom together. The polytechnic student washes his hands, but the university student does not. The polytechnic student asks the university student: "Don't they teach you at university to wash your hands after peeing?" The university student replies: "Don't they teach you at polytechnic not to pee on your hands?" When I was a student (at a university) that was considered an amazingly funny joke "against" polytechnic students. No one ever saw that it worked just as well with "university" and "polytechnic" reversed!

It's the wise and foolish virgins. Which we had at our church last Sunday. (I mean the story, not the actual virgins.)

"Nice to see you, to see you, nice."

How do you know they weren't having fun? All you really know is that you weren't. And that's hardly surprising: there are few things more irritating than a drunken person when you yourself are sober. (Just playing Devil's advocate. I'm not suggesting drunkenness is good.)

Robert the Bruce hiding from the English after his defeat. The legend is he saw a spider trying to spin a web. No matter how many times the web collapsed, the spider kept on trying. So Robert kept trying too, and next time he kicked the English's collective butt! "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again!"

" If at first you don't succeed..."

Simply "saying prayers" can be a start though. I have a quotation above my desk at work:

Sorry to drag up Muppets Christmas Carol again, but 37:37 makes me think of that. I've never been able to do it though. When I wake up in the morning, it's not so much "let thy heart be full of thanks to God" as "Ugggggghhhhhh...is it really 7 already? I'll have 5 more minutes" which is actually more than 25 more minutes, followed by a mad scramble to get dressed and out the door without very much "thanks to God" along the way. Something to work on... P.S. First mention of the Liahona for a long, long time. No mention of who now has it though.

Hmmm so there really is one! I couldn't walk down Bourbon street without humming the song by Sting. "The rim of my hat hides the eye of a beast, I've the face of a sinner but the hands of a priest."

I've been to New Orleans. I kept my eyes open for it, but I never saw the House of the Rising Sun. I did see Bourbon Street though.